Laying the Bounds - Northcabin, Bristol
Northcabin is a programme of temporary commissions taking place in the disused operating cabin at Redcliffe Bridge, Bristol. Northcabin commissions emerging artists to produce unique and ambitious artworks.
Laying the Bounds continues the artist’s interest in signs and signifiers that can be found within the public realm. The work consists of a structure, which has been carefully designed and constructed to closely navigate the interior line of the cabin, and clad from the front with a series of steel panels.
The surface of the structure has been worked into with a variety of finishes; layering of paper, flat areas of colour, experiments with rusts, as well as a series photographs incorporating additional materials, to create the appearance that areas of the work are deteriorating similarly to the cabin and aspects of its surroundings. These reproduced effects have then been arranged in an orderly grid formation reinforcing the multitude of contradictions within the work itself and the area it inhabits. Although strong references and repetition of shapes and patterns have been incorporated from the nearby neighboring area, through the production of the work they have been abstracted from their sources and imbued with the artist’s personal response.
Helen de Main’s new commission has built on the site of the cabin as a prominent position within the city and comments on the current regeneration climate. By encasing the cabin from within, the artist has demonstrated the different traditions in which existing buildings are re-developed and come to contain distinct other forms. The work has created a second space inside the cabin with a contrasting set of references, creating a tension between the two structural forms, which challenge perceived hierarchies between architectural structures.
Essay by Emma Cocker commissioned to accompany the work. Click here to read.
Steel, wood, photographs and paint finishes. 10m x 2.7 x 5m.
Northcabin is generously supported by Arts Council South West, Bristol City Council, Alias, Situations, Spike Island Associates, Interface a-n Magazine and The University of the West of England. Thanks is given to Bristol City Council for the loan of the space and Xited who have kindly given their support in kind.
Laying the Bounds was produced with support from Edinburgh Sculpture Workshops Creative Initiatives Awards